What a crazy question most people would say. Of course, there is. We are wealthier, healthier and have more understanding about the world than ever before. But to the spiritual eye we live in a time of unremitting evil in which our governments are attacking freedom, our scientists no longer seek truth, our churches deny God and our artists hate beauty. The list could be extended. Nothing does what it is supposed to do and often actively works against what it is supposed to do. Could there be anything good about any of this?
The answer is yes. God can always bring good out of evil and what he may be doing now is allowing the world to become so insane and corrupted (which it will inevitably do when separated from God who is truth) that more and more people will wake up and turn to him in response to the evil. When it gets so dark that you can't see, you reach out for the light. God is essentially saying "You think you can do without me? Very well, try it and see." Of course, some people are so far gone in their rejection of divine reality that they will never come to their senses. This may be through pride or it may be that they have simply killed their own souls through neglect and denial. But for those who are redeemable, now is their chance. This, I suspect, is only the beginning. The situation will rapidly deteriorate. It is only recently that the results of atheism have really kicked in as the legacy of religion has supported us for a certain time after religion itself was rejected. But we have now lived in a materialistic society for 100 years, give or take, and have used up our spiritual capital. True religion is followed by only a very few.
But this is good because it means that if and when we return to religion we do so because we want to and therefore we take it seriously. It's not just what people do. It's what we actively want to do, need to do. Our religion will not just be a formal observation but a serious choice that determines our life and permeates all our thinking.
The present evils do not come from God. According to my understanding they are demonically driven and their main purpose is the corruption of souls which is a tragedy. But souls must choose God. That is the reason for us being in this world. We are given every opportunity but if we reject the opportunity that is our own choice. So God is not responsible for the evil in any way but he can use it as a means to wake us up as/if we react against it. The responsibility for this, though, is ours. We must learn to see evil as evil and that means recover a spiritual view of life which tells us that evil as not just doing bad things in a worldly sense. It is rejecting God and the idea of oneself as a spiritual being. In the final analysis, the spiritual view is the only one that makes any kind of sense but we have been deceived into thinking it is false because we have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by over a century of propaganda. But what the last year has made abundantly clear is that you cannot trust authority. It's all been bought and paid for. God is telling you that your only hope is in him. Accept this gift and you will be free.
@William - Very good. That's it.
ReplyDelete"God can always bring good out of evil " - yes indeed. In fact, I am beginning to feel that this is exactly how this mortal world works in a general sense.
Of course; for there to be Good there is (and must be) already Good in the world, intrinsically and always; and this is true because we are *all* children of God and all have *something* divine in us. (Although this may be denied, or the divine in us may be opposed.)
But equally - as thinkers have always recognized - this is a world of disease, corruption and death: that is the inbuilt tendency of earthly matter.
Yet, from this always changing, always corrupting matter (which has always been the case) - God is always making opportunities for Good, for Good choices. Evil is always unravelling and God is always re-weaving.
This has not stopped; but the choices and opportunities are much more restricted to the larger spiritual realm - as the material sub-realm (within spirit) has become artificially separated from spirit and thereby corrupted.
This is the coming to a point business. Good choices are becoming restricted to spiritual, Godly, Christian choices - with unprecedented clarity.
I've wondered for years, in my own muddled way, if there is anything truly good about the modern era.
ReplyDeleteGood to the extent that the good outweighs the bad.
If the bad outweighs the good, then it's still bad.
For example, I am fairly sure that smartphones are, overall, bad. The goods that come out of them, such as geolocation and navigation, or the ability to play videos at any time, anywhere, don't outweigh the bad. We are losing our ability to use paper maps. Phone fascination cuts us off from real life and others.
Perhaps the reduction in child mortality that is part of the modern era is a net good: more mothers and fathers got to spend time with more children. But even there, the dysgenic results, and the population explosion that has allowed government and power to treat humans as mere fungible subjects is terrible. So even there...
When you aren't really afraid of death or mortality and disease so much, due to actually believing in God and the soul's eternal nature, then giving up the freedoms we had to give up for almost all of modernity's goods no longer makes sense.
I'd gladly exchange modernity's conveniences for the lack of constant totalitarian surveillance of a medieval Norwegian village where my ancestors lived.
The one thing I'm leaving out, of course, is the incredible reveal that the current system and evils have given us, allowing people to see the reality of the battle between good and evil, and to take a side.
It's as Bruce says. When things comes to a point you have to take sides in a way you might not have done in more ambivalent times.
ReplyDeleteThe main good thing about the modern era is that human beings become more individual with greater agency, greater creative potential and more able to enter into the reality of God with full consciousness. That's a risky business as is only too obvious but it's a necessity if human beings are to evolve to real god-like status themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDjy_K9--Ls&t=1939s
ReplyDelete"God is now forming the troops"
"But at a certain point those people who are faithful, their ability to influence the Good is going to be rather extraordinary"
Watch the whole video if you can.
My question to you is - would you say that a majority of the humans are heading towards depravation?
ReplyDeleteIt does seem like that but only God can judge. Also, even those of us who believe we see clearly always have to guard against self satisfaction and complacency.
ReplyDelete